Oil and gas: licensing rounds

Current and previous licensing rounds for onshore and offshore petroleum licences, including lists of offers made in each round, press notices, maps, and the contact details of operators offered licences.

On 1st April 2015 certain functions passed from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) to the Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) a newly created Executive Agency of DECC

Overview

Licensing rounds yield better quality bids than other methods. Unlike auctions, for instance, licensing rounds do not divert significant sums of money away from exploration work and they give a much better expectation that a licence will be awarded to the bid that promises to optimise exploitation of the UK’s petroleum resources.

Onshore and offshore licensing rounds generally take place every other year.

Below you can obtain information about current and previous licensing rounds including lists of offers made in each round, press notices, maps, and the contact details of operators offered licences. This includes data from as far back as 1964.

28th Round Second Tranche of Offers

These awards detailed below are conditional on compliance with the Offshore Safety Directive Regulations

28th Seaward Licensing Round

On 6th November 2014, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) announced the offer of awards for Licenses in the 28th Seaward Licensing Round.

Below is a list of links detailing the offer and the Press Notice that includes a statement by Matt Hancock, the Minister for Energy.

Please note, as required by the Habitats Directive, a screening assessment has been carried out of the Blocks applied for in the 28th Round. As a result, 94 of the Blocks applied for, which are close to, or in, certain Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) and Special Protection Areas (SPAs), will be subject to further environmental assessments before any offer is made. A link to the page where this screening document appears on DECC’s website is provided below.

14th Landward Licensing Round

On the 28th July 2014, the Energy Minister, Matthew Hancock, invited applications for Licences in the 14th Landward Licensing Round. The period for license applications to be submitted closed

Below is a list of links to: a Press Notice that includes a statement by Matthew Hancock; the official invitation in the Official Journal of the European Union; and the Strategic Environmental Assessment that was was carried out by DECC.

A Questions and Answer link was provided as below to respond to enquiries during the Round.

First tranche of awards

The announcement of the results of the 14th licensing round will be in two tranches. We plan to announce the first tranche of awards in August and the second tranche later in the year. The first tranche will be for those licence blocks that have been screened out as not requiring further environmental assessment under the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2010. For the remaining blocks, which do require assessment under those Regulations, we will be launching a consultation, also in August. Subject to that consultation, a second tranche of awards will be announced later in the year.
Details of the awards, when made, will be posted here.

14th Round - Other Issues

The award of a licence does not imply prior consent to actual activities, and there are other regulatory and legal provisions that may restrict a licensee’s ability to carry out its proposed activities. The links below provide an introduction to such factors,

The Coal Authority manages the UK’s coal reserves and must agree to any access to coal formations for any purpose.

Certain processes capture native hydrocarbons, which originate in coal seams. The exploitation of these require permission from the Coal Authority (for access to the coal) and a licence from DECC (for capture of the hydrocarbons). The processes include Coalbed methane (CBM) which liberates native methane from virgin coal seams and vent gas (also called mines gas) which captures methane from working or disused mines.

Licences issued other than in formal licensing rounds, including Segregation Licences and Out-of-Round Licences, are not included here.

One Licence number (P476) was allocated but not used.

Since the 11th Round, licences have continued into final term only if development had already approved or imminent.

A single application may cover separated areas, leading to more than one licence, which is why licences awarded may outnumber applications.

‘Blocks’ includes parts of blocks.

Table footnotes

(a) Five blocks offered in sealed-bid auction; the rest in standard way
(b) Frontier round
(c) One third relinquishment if two or more wells drilled; two thirds if only one well drilled; all if no wells drilled
(d) Frontier licences
(e) Traditional and/or Promote licences
(f) According to original terms of licences; subject therefore to subsequent circumstances and amendments
(x) Figures not yet available